


let it be to kill the demon

by kenopsia (indie)



Series: let it be to kill the demon [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alive Noah, F/M, Gen, Noah deserved better, So I gave it to him, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: Gansey felt warmer as they all moved in at Blue’s request, around and behind him, and Gansey felt strangely whole as all of the parts of his heart nestled in close. Adam responded first. “Holy shit,” he said, a hand reaching towards Glendower but jerking back before it got there. “Ronan.”“I see it,” Ronan said. Gansey could see the fine tremors in his body.“Yeah,” Noah breathed.“You knew,” Henry said, pointing at him.“I thought, maybe.”Gansey could feel and see that around him, they had all ended up on their knees, somehow. Gansey touched his own face and it came away wet. “What,” he sobbed. He was not sure why he was crying.





	let it be to kill the demon

Behind the door, they found him. Gansey felt his chest seize up, hard and powerful,and had to fight to keep himself on his feet. Against his best efforts, a sob escaped.

There.

He was there.

Gansey felt as if perhaps his brain had gone rogue, as if all of the disparate pieces of him had finally cracked, and given him exactly what he wanted. Perhaps he was staring at the historic final resting place of Owen Glendower, but his brain had painted him in, overlaid him in repose but breathing rhythmically, on top of his final resting place.

Unquestionably alive. A sleeping king.

“Gansey,” Blue whispered, curling her hand in his so that the curve of her knuckles rested in his slack grip. She might have known what he was thinking, his paranoia that his constant oscillation between the wild hope that he would one day find Glendower like this and the occasional fear that bordered on a certainty that he would find him dead had blurred his rational thought. Created this for him the way Ronan’s magic did when he imagined something too many times.

She might have known because she spoke, her face tilted up so she could lower her voice: “Gansey, he’s real. Or… he looks real to me.”

The others hung back, Noah — his energy in tatters, hardly any boy left at all — Adam and Ronan crowded in the doorway, and Henry, just off to the side. Gansey had never seen his hair less than perfect, but it was askew now. They seemed to all be waiting.

“Go,” Adam insisted, and no one contradicted him.

“Courage, dear heart,” Blue said. Gansey loved her impossibly. It felt as if she had just pushed him back into time, out of the fear-drenched place he’d been stuck in. He stepped forward, and his knees buckled of their own accord. His _king._

It was strange to look at him, familiar and alien all at once. Owen Glendower in suspended sleep was so little like Gansey had expected, aged but still broad, with a neatly trimmed beard that was halfway to grey. It felt strange to think of him as handsome, but he was certainly distinguished.

Blue let out a gasp. “Gans,” she said. “No. You’re not the right person to ask. Ronan? Noah? Adam? Henry? Are you… is that… come tell me what you see.”

Gansey felt warmer as they all moved in at Blue’s request, around and behind him, and Gansey felt strangely whole as all of the parts of his heart nestled in close. Adam responded first. “Holy shit,” he said, a hand reaching towards Glendower but jerking back before it got to him. “Ronan.”

“I see it,” Ronan said. Gansey could see the fine tremors in his body.

“Yeah,” Noah breathed.

“You knew,” Henry said, pointing at him.

“I thought, maybe.”

Gansey could feel and see that around him, they had all ended up on their knees, somehow. Gansey touched his own face and it came away wet. “What,” he sobbed. He was not sure why he was crying.

Blue enveloped him, wrapped vine-close and held him to her chest. “Gansey,” she said. And then: “my king.”

Adam laughed, and it sounded true, the sound resonating all the way through him. “My king,” he echoed. There was no sarcasm in it. Ronan repeated it. And Henry, Noah.

“Blue,” Gansey said, and finally untangled himself from her. it ached to do so, but there had never been a time more urgent. “Let me see your switchblade. We need to… make sure.”

“I’m still kind of afraid to open it,” she said, but reached for her small, cross-body bag for him and drew it out.

“I’ll open it,” Ronan said. He did, looking efficient and competent. Gansey reached towards him, palm open in a question.

“Not a chance, you fucking dumbass. You’ve got nerve endings and shit and I’d have to cut halfway to the bone to make sure you’d scar there.”

Ronan took his hand and shoved his sweater — Henry’s sweater — up past his elbow. “Don’t think about how much this will hurt,” Ronan said. He’d said t to Gansey before and it had saved his life. Adam held his other shoulder, and Blue took his hand.

Ronan did not hesitate, did not make Gansey sit in the agony of anticipation. Instead, he moved, quick and sure and Gansey’s whole body felt the slick, nauseous pain of it, and his jaw fell halfway to the floor as he dragged in a ragged breath. Gansey could immediately feel Ronan’s entire hand wrap around the back of his arm, pressing in a way that helped dull the sharpest and immediate parts of the pain, muting it. “You’re okay,” Ronan rasped in his ear, and Gansey realized he was similarly frayed around the edges.

“ _You’re_ okay,” Gansey parroted, glad that his friends were keeping him upright when all of his own strength had been sapped.

Henry said, “Mettle,” and Gansey nodded at him.

“Gansey. This is been your quest,” Blue said. “You should wake him up, but you have to hurry.”

Gansey let Ronan steer him forward. He touched Owen Glendower’s shoulder. Glendower opened his eyes with little fanfare, and it was disconcerting looking him in the eyes. Gansey tried to square his shoulders as he sat up, feeling underdressed and overwhelmed, a little boy who stayed out too late and got caught out after dark.

“Glendower,” Gansey said.

Glendower’s mouth crooked up. “They call me that, now.”

He should have a speech prepared. What doesn’t he? He’s been preparing for this for nine years. Glendower said, “Would you like to see?”

“Yes,” Gansey said. Glendower lifted one thick arm above his head touching the back of his own neck in a familiar gesture to let Gansey see his — their? — scar, thin and weathered and pale against his tanned bicep.

“You don’t have much time,” Glendower said. He had to keep thinking of him that way. Gansey could deal with the implications later, who the king in front of him was, is, would be.

“I know,” Gansey said, agonized. “I wish we had more time.”

“There will be,” Glendower said. “You’ll take the long road.”

Glendower panned around to look at them all, pride in his eyes. “My magicians,” he said, and then, “my court. I have missed your faces, and I hope to meet with you in the annwn.”

“We need to kill the demon,” Adam said. “Is that a favor you can give?”

Glendower shook his head. “Not I, as I am,” he said. “My role now is something else.”

“A favor, Dick,” Ronan said, sharp, although he did not let of Gansey or clutch too tightly. “That’s the fucking story we’ve heard.”

Gansey wanted to object to the way he’d spoken to Glendower, but then realized there was no universe where he, himself, was offended by Ronan. If Glendower hadn’t seen Ronan in — how long, Gansey couldn’t say — he might even be glad for it. He figured he had guessed correctly in holding his tongue, because Glendower smiled at Ronan. “Your Gansey will bestow the favor. Ask him if he’s ready.”

“Gansey,” Ronan said, uneasy.

He locked eyes with Glendower, old, powerful, distinguished. That was his future, and somehow the past. His heart hurt to think of it, but woven in throughout that, he was also proud. He nodded at him, and Glendower looked like he might be feeling the same.

Glendower looked to Blue. “I have missed you most of all.”

“Are you alone… back then? Were you, I mean, shit shit, I don’t know how to talk about time,” she was crying, too, and did not let go of Gansey’s hand to wipe her tears with the back of her own sleeve.

“No, my dear. Just for this sleep. We stay together until the end. I go into the long sleep for this moment, and you go back into the trees. You are just as beautiful to me at the end.”

“I’m sorry this isn’t very romantic,” she says. “And that….”

“I am sorrier for you, my dear. I am ready for what is next.” Glendower took her hand and Gansey let her go. “Let it be to kill the demon,” he said, in a quiet voice.

“Let it be,” Blue confirmed, and leaned forward to place a single kiss on the old king’s mouth. He closed his eyes. The rest of them averted theirs. When Gansey looked back, Blue was helping Glendower back down to where he had started. “My precious jewel,” he murmured, and closed his eyes again.  

Almost as soon as they did, they heard a voice. Gansey had heard it before. “Because of Glendower, you will live,” the old man’s voice rang in the cave. “Someone on the ley line has died when they should not, so you will live when you should not.”

This time, it was not directed at him, but at Noah. Gansey knew it before turning to look at him. Instead of the nearly invisible remnant of tattered ghost, there was a boy with the details filled in, and a darkly bruised face.

 

There were hardly any more tears to cry, but they collectively found them as they surrounded Noah. Blue peppered his face with kisses, Ronan held on, Gansey bled on him. Adam and Henry waited to the tide to fall back a bit, and then took their turns.

They left Glendower behind, rapidly becoming bones and dust. Gansey could not bear to watch. The took turns holding him up on the climb out, after Ronan sliced off one of his sleeves to tie around the back of Gansey’s arm.

The roar of triumph was undergirded by his own disquiet at watching his death, and the relief that it hadn’t been today’s death. And Noah.

They would be back, probably, because Gansey would talk to historians and news crews, although they would probably leave out the part where he’d been breathing when they found him. They’d also leave that he’d traded his life for Noah’s, who had loaned it to Gansey by some sort of time fuckery. Between them there were just and unjust deaths, willing and unwilling life, that they had passed back and forth. Somehow, both of them were breathing.

Gansey felt like they might all need a week to cry and hold each other by the pulse point. He’d seen the love of his life kill his future self, who had been buried hundreds of years ago, with her poisoned kiss. The past was before him, his future tangled (he thought then of Blue’s face on a tapestry and that old camero wheel and felt dizzy) and he was going to need so many psychic consults.

For now, he held onto two and three hands at a time. There were enough of them that he didn’t even have to keep his eyes open, just let them steer him towards the surface, blind and trusting.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @katiewont


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